Sweet Emma, Dear Böbe

A film set in Budapest. Emma and Böbe are teachers. For years they taught Russian in schools; the regime changed and Russian lessons were dropped. Now they are the students: they attend an English course and are expected to reach a level where they can teach the new language within a year. Neither is young any more and they can barely follow the classes. They live in a teachers' hostel. The room is small, there is no money, the future is uncertain. Emma is in a relationship with a married head teacher and knows nothing will come of it. Böbe is more practical; she looks for other ways, and the ways she finds take her somewhere worse. What the film is interested in is not politics but the way politics can make an ordinary person's profession void overnight: nobody asks these two women what will become of them. In the background the city is changing; advertisements, new shops, the old order being dismantled. Johanna ter Steege plays Emma and Enikő Börcsök plays Böbe. Péter Andorai is in the cast. István Szabó directed. The film won a jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival. Who it is for: anyone who likes films about the transition years in Eastern Europe. Who it is not for: anyone looking for hope; the narrative promises no recovery and its ending is heavy.